Tag Archives: Cristiana Dell’Anna

It was on July 7, 1946, at St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, that Pope Pius XII canonized Frances Xavier Cabrini, making her the first U.S. citizen to be named a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. Four years later, that same pope named her the patron saint of all immigrants. All of this happened about 30 years after her passing in 1917 at the age of 67 at Columbus Hospital in Chicago. Between then and when she arrived in America at the age of 38, she had founded 67 orphanages, hospitals, schools and other social institutions worldwide. This year, …

The seed for “Cabrini,” the soon-to-be-released biopic of America’s first saint, was planted nearly seven decades ago by a young man in a small church in Philadelphia. The year was 1955 and J. Eustace Wolfington was just starting out in business. Born and raised in the City of Brotherly Love, he was 23 years old at the time. A devout Catholic, Wolfington was hoping to fit in an early-morning Mass before the start of a long workday. By chance, he chose St. Donato Church, where he encountered a statue of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, who founded the parish’s school in …